Category Archives: china espionage

05/24/12

China Cyber-Warfare Capabilities

Cyber Espionage and Cyberwarfare Capabilities.

In 2011, computer networks and systems around the world continued to be targets of intrusions and data theft, many of which originated within China. Although some of the targeted systems were U.S. government-owned, others were commercial networks owned by private companies whose stolen data represents valuable intellectual property. In the hands of overseas competitors, this information could diminish commercial and technological advantages earned through years of hard work and investment. Intrusions in 2011 occurred in key sectors, including companies that directly support U.S. defense programs.

Authoritative writings and China’s persistent cyber intrusions indicates the likelihood that Beijing is using cyber network operations (CNOs) as a tool to collect strategic intelligence. In parallel with its military preparations, China has increased diplomatic engagement and advocacy in multilateral and international forums where cyber issues are discussed and debated. Beijing’s agenda is frequently in line with Russia’s e&orts to promote cyber norms under a UN framework. In September 2011, China and Russia were the primary sponsors of an Information Security Code of Conduct that would have governments exercise sovereign authority over the %ow of information in cyberspace. China has not yet accepted that existing mechanisms (such as the Law of Armed Con%ict), apply in cyberspace. However, China’s thinking in this area may evolve as its own exposure increases through greater investment in global networks.

Technology Transfer, Strategic Trade Policy, and Military Modernization. 

The PRC continues to modernize its military by incorporating Western (mostly U.S.) dual-use technologies, which have also assisted its overall indigenous industrial, military industrial, and high-technology sector development. One of the PRC’s stated national security objectives is to leverage legally and illegally acquired dual-use and military-related technologies to its advantage. China has a long history of cooperation between its civilian and military sectors and openly espouses the need to exploit civilian technologies for use in its military modernization. In this context, the cumulative e&ect of U.S. dual-use technology transfers to China could also make a substantial material contribution to its military capabilities. For example, interactions with Western aviation manufacturing !rms may also inadvertently provide bene!t to China’s defense aviation industry. “rough its advisory role within the U.S. export control process, DoD will continue to identify and mitigate risk, and seek to prevent critical advanced technologies exports to China that could be diverted to unauthorized end-use or to third-country end-users of concern, or contribute to overall modernization of China’s military and defense industrial base.

Espionage.:

Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage. Chinese attempts to collect U.S. technological and economic information will continue at a high level and will represent a growing and persistent threat to U.S. economic security. “e nature of the cyber threat will evolve with continuing technological advances in the global information environment.

Sensitive U.S. economic information and technology are targeted by intelligence services, private sector companies, academic/research institutions, and citizens of dozens of countries. China is likely to remain an aggressive and capable collector of sensitive U.S. economic information and technologies, particularly in cyberspace.

Civil-Military Integration. :

China’s defense industry has bene!ted from China’s rapidly expanding civilian economy, particularly its science and technology sector. Access to foreign advanced dual-use technology assists China’s civilian economic integration into the global production and research and development (R&D) chain. For example, with increasing globalization and integration of information technologies, companies such as Huawei, Datang, and Zhongxing, with their ties to the PRC government and PLA entities, pose potential challenges in the blurring lines between commercial and government/military-associated entities.

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05/23/12

China’s Cyber Espionage -DoD Report

gAtO rEpOrTiNg - China’s Cyber Espionage: Annual Report to Congress – Military and Security Development involving the People’s Republic of China May-2012 -

THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA (PRC) is pursuing a long-term, comprehensive military mod- ernization program designed to improve the capacity of China’s armed forces to fight and win “local wars under conditions of informatization,” or high-intensity, information-centric regional military operations of short duration. China’s leaders view modernization of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as an essential component of their strategy to take advan- tage of what they perceive to be a “window of strategic opportunity” to advance China’s national development during the first two decades of the 21st century. During this period, China’s leaders are placing a priority on fostering a positive external environment to provide the PRC with the strategic space to focus on economic growth and development. At the same time, Chinese leaders seek to maintain peace and stability along their country’s periphery, expand their diplomatic influence to facilitate access to markets, capital, and resources, and avoid direct confrontation with the United States and other countries. This strategy has led to an expansion of China’s presence in regions all over the world, creating new and expanding economic and diplomatic interests.

As these interests have grown, and as China has assumed new roles and responsibilities in the inter- national community, China’s military modernization is, to an increasing extent, focusing on investments in military capabilities that would enable China’s armed forces to conduct a wide range of missions, including those farther from China. Even as the PLA is contend- ing with this growing array of missions, preparing for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait remains the principal focus and driver of much of China’s military invest- ment. In this context, over the past year, the PLA con- tinued to build the capabilities and develop the doctrine it considers necessary to deter Taiwan from declaring independence; to deter, delay, and deny effective U.S. intervention in a potential cross-Strait conflict; and to defeat Taiwan forces in the event of hostilities.

To support the PLA’s expanding set of roles and mis- sions, China’s leaders in 2011 sustained investment in advanced cruise missiles, short and medium range conventional ballistic missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles, counterpace weapons, and military cyberspace capabilities which appear designed to enable anti-access/ area-denial (A2/AD) missions, or what PLA strategists refer to as “counter intervention operations.” The PLA also continued to demonstrate improved capabilities in advanced fighter aircraft, as evidenced by the inaugural flight testing of the J-20 stealth fighter; limited power projection, with the launch of China’s first aircraft carrier for sea trials; integrated air defenses; under- sea warfare; nuclear deterrence and strategic strike; improved command and control; and more sophisti- cated training and exercises across China’s air, naval, and land forces.

Underscoring the extent to which China’s leaders are increasingly looking to the PLA to perform missions that go beyond China’s immediate territorial concerns, over the past year the PLA deployed assets to support non-combatant evacuation operations from Libya, extended its presence in the Gulf of Aden for a third year of counterpiracy operations, took on leadership roles in United Nations peace operations, and con- ducted medical exchanges and a service mission to Latin America and the Caribbean using the PLA Navy’s hospital ship.

During their January 2011 summit, President Barack Obama and China’s President Hu Jintao committed to work together to build a cooperative partnership based on mutual respect and mutual benefit. Within that framework, the U.S. Department of Defense seeks to build a military-to-military relationship with China that is healthy, stable, reliable, and continuous. Strengthening the U.S.-China military-to-military relationship is a part of shaping China’s choices by encouraging it to cooperate with the United States and its allies and partners in the delivery of international public goods, including in such endeavors as counter- piracy, international peacekeeping, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations. As the United States builds a stronger foundation for a military-to- military relationship with China, it also will continue to monitor China’s evolving military strategy, doctrine, and force development. In concert with Allies and partners, the United States will continue adapting its forces, posture, and operational concepts to maintain a stable and secure Asia-Pacific security environment.

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The United States continues to pay “very careful attention” to China’s growing cyberspace capabilities, said Dave Helvey, acting deputy assistant defense secretary for East Asia. “There is the potential for these types of operations to be very disruptive” to the United States and its allies, said Helvey in briefing reporters May 18 on the contents of the Pentagon’s newly issued annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments. The China report claims that “many” of the cyber intrusions and data thefts conducted on US systems in 2011 originated in China.

The report infers that the Chinese government was behind at least some of those attacks, although Helvey declined to offer specifics. He also said he couldn’t say whether such attacks are increasing in frequency. “We note that China’s investing in not only capabilities to better defend their networks, but also they’re looking at ways to use cyber for offensive operations,” he said. “We also highlight a number of areas where we see China engaging in cyber activity focused on computer-network exploitation and lately our pipelines. That continues to be a concern of ours,” said Helvey. -gAtO oUt

This is a must Read from the DOD —>China DoD May 2012  report;
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05/7/12

Will .China Mobile. Spy on U.S?

gAtO wAs- reading Stan Abrams a lawyer and professor in Beijing, China article about “Will China Mobile Get It’s U.S. License Approved? – http://www.businessinsider.com/will-china-mobile-get-its-us-license-approved-2012-5” the FCC “Team Telecom” has all the power in this deal. This is simple when a foreign ownership wants to come into our telecom world we want the DHS, DOJ, FBI DoD to investigate them for backdoor into the infrastructure that no virus scan can detect- in the hardware and firmware….

This is a big deal, we gave the OK a few years ago to China Telecom and China Unicom similar licenses in 2002-03. Why the big deal now. Well the last few years China has increased it’s attacks on U.S companies sucking in their IP (-Intellectual Properties). To top things off Huawei just got turned down down-under in Australia to allow it to come into their Telecom network. Once again when you give access to our telecom network we are giving them the key to all our information. Now keep in mind that we still have over 60-70% of our government C&C (Command and Control) running on our public Internet pipelines. Back a few years ago China re-routed over 15% of all the Internet traffic thru their routers. While we developed a kill switch to isolate us from the rest of the world and do a reset. Anyway the FCC has a lot of power that no one knows about check out there liaison activities list below it quite interesting.

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Okay, reality check time. I doubt that China Mobile would want the type of scrutiny that a court case would mandate, so I don’t expect a formal challenge to a rejection from “Team Telecom.” Certainly Beijing doesn’t want China Mobile to disclose to anyone what it is required by Chinese law to do with data on its networks (hint: government monitoring). Moreover, the U.S. national security apparatus certainly wouldn’t want to disclose what it knows to the “other side” (i.e. China). And at the end of the day, neither side wishes to disclose any of this to the general public.

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If they turn China Mobile down and it’s contested it would be good to see what evidence the U.S. Government has to say “we believe this company is spying on us with these backdoors they put in”.  Yeah in an election year it’s going to get hot with China if they play a bad boy I think Obama may have to show them what we can really do in cyber space -gAtO oUt

Reference:

FCC Homeland Security – Liaison Activities http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/docs/liaison.pdf

Read more: http://www.chinahearsay.com/will-china-mobile-get-its-u-s-license-approved/#ixzz1uBhPIJEt

CodeName Tempest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST

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03/27/12

Huawei Spying on Customer

Huawei - Mitt Romney's Bain Capital sold out 3Com to the Chinese

gAtO wRoTe - about the Chinese company Huawei (Shenzhen, China-based company) a long time ago with it’s ties to Rick Perry the governor of Texas and ex-Presidential bid and Mitt Romney’s company Bain Capital that sold out 3Com and sold our national secrets to them. Now it finally falls on Australia to take the first step WHEN electoral fortunes are fading a good “reds under the beds” story can boost political stocks, but the row about Chinese telecommunications equipment supplier Huawei being barred from supplying equipment to the National Broadband Network puts a new twist on an old tactic. Generally it’s the Right that beats the red peril drum. Here in Australia it’s a Labor government claiming the NBN is too vital a piece of national infrastructure to be put at risk by buying equipment from China.

Huawei, which is second only to Sweden’s Ericsson in telecom equipment sales, was blocked on Monday from bidding on a $36 billion Australian national broadband contract. Security firm Symantec (SYMC, Fortune 500) ended in November because of Symantec’s concerns that its relationship with Huawei would prevent it from getting a sensitive U.S. government security contract.

Will this be the tipping point were we America stands up and see’s pass the profits and starts with looking at our nations cyber security survival. We hear that DHS and NSA and everyone is pushing for dollars $$ to fix our infrastructure but when will we start to stop the Chinese from stealing our intellectual capital that has made America great. Politicians need to take a look at what is the real problem like Rick Perry allowing dozens of Chinese companies to set up shop in Texas and claiming that they have such a great employment record at the cost of our national security.

gAtO is sad that we see the veterans of our great country without a job when we could be investing in Cyber Security training our young veterans in this field. Veterans have vital experience but as gAtO has found out personally the VA has a problem with allowing our veterans to get an education in this vital field of Internet Security. I like China don’t get me wrong and some of the accusation about China I suspect is nothing more that a scare tactic to get funding for political pet project. But if we start to training our veterans and anyone who wants this training we will not lose the cyber war- gAtO oUt 

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02/18/12

U.S. Not Afraid To Say It: China’s The Cyber Bad Guy : NPR

American officials have long complained about countries that systematically hack into U.S. computer networks to steal valuable data, but until recently they did not name names.

In the last few months, that has changed. China is now officially one of the cyber bad guys and probably the worst.

“We know, and there’s good evidence … of very deliberate, focused cyber espionage to capture very valuable research and development information, or innovative ideas, or source code or business plans for their own advantage,” says Mike McConnell, a former director of national intelligence and before that, the director of the National Security Agency.

It’s the Chinese he’s talking about, though other countries — like Russia — also engage in cyber espionage to gain a competitive edge. China stands out as especially aggressive.

“China does not care what other people think,” says Richard Bejtlich, the chief security officer at MANDIANT, a company that helps firms deal with cyber intrusions.

“Culturally, they are very interested in being seen as responsible, but when it comes to their actual work on the ground, if you try kicking them out of your network on a Friday, they’re back on a Monday,” he says.

via U.S. Not Afraid To Say It: China’s The Cyber Bad Guy : NPR.

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02/18/12

Joint Chiefs Chair: Chinese Hackers ‘Not Necessarily Hostile

This headline from CNN – “Joint Chiefs Chair: Chinese Hacking Not Necessarily a Hostile Act” – reads like it came from the Onion. But don’t jump into your bunker yet – the reasoning behind this apparently blissfully naive statement by General Martin Dempsey is at least slightly plausible:

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he “believe(s) someone in China is hacking into our systems and stealing technology and intellectual property, which at this point is a crime.”

But Dempsey said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he cannot attribute the Chinese hacking to China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, that if it could be proven that the PLA was behind a hacking of the defense infrastructure, whether it would it be considered a “hostile act,” Dempsey said such wasn’t necessarily the case.

Now, you can quibble over the semantics in this. A cyberattack on the United States’ defenses might not come from the Chinese government itself – though one has to wonder how much privacy hackers enjoy, given China’s notoriously censor-happy culture. Moreover, even if a private hacker was good enough to evade the Chinese government’s own crop of cybersecurity experts and bypass our security, it’s fairly obvious that the hacker in question would be able to sell his method for a very high price.

via Joint Chiefs Chair: Chinese Hackers ‘Not Necessarily Hostile’ | TheBlaze.com.

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02/18/12

China’s Hacking Of U.S. Remains A Top Concern : NPR

U.S officials have long complained about countries that systematically hack into U.S. computer networks to steal valuable data, but until recently they did not name names.

In the last few months, that has changed. China is now officially one of the cyber bad guys and probably the worst.

“We know and there’s good evidence … of very deliberate, focused cyber espionage to capture very valuable research and development information, or innovative ideas, or source code or business plans for their own advantage,” says Mike McConnell, a former director of national intelligence and before that the director of the National Security Agency.

It’s the Chinese he’s talking about, though other countries also engage in cyber espionage to gain a competitive edge. Russia, for example, but China stands out as especially aggressive.

“China does not care what other people think,” says Richard Bejtlich, the chief security officer at MANDIANT, a company that helps firms deal with cyber intrusions. “Culturally they are very interested in being seen as responsible, but when it comes to their actual work on the ground; if you try kicking them out of your network on a Friday, they’re back on a Monday.”

The increased willingness of the U.S. government to point a finger at the Chinese dates from an official report released last October that identified them “as the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.”

via China’s Hacking Of U.S. Remains A Top Concern : NPR.

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02/17/12

China Cyber Attack Threat

It is clear that cyber warfare will be part of any future conflict and we must become prepared for that type of combat here on the homeland front.

Two recent NPR stories highlighted the continuing potential for cyber attacks.  One focused on the threat that China poses and the other story on what we should be doing in general to legislate cyber defenses for the private sector and our critical infrastructure–the vast majority of which is owned and operated by private business.

It is clear to me that China is actively working to determine the how best to attack our military and industrial complexes.  The cyber war of the future has already begun.  Going back to my military training let’s consider what it is that they are doing.

via China Cyber Attack Threat.

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02/17/12

Are Chinese Telecoms acting as the ears for the Sri Lankan government?

The title is inspired by the article Are Chinese Telecoms Acting as the Ears for Central Asian Authoritarians? published in Eurasianet.org, examining the probable role of Chinese telecoms firms, notably Huawei and ZTE, in espionage and surveillance. The article notes that both ZTE and Huawei have signed contracts worth tens of millions of US dollars with governments in Central Asia, not known for their democratic credentials. The article also flags an on-going US congressional committee probe into the two companies in particular, and how the telecoms products (like USB dongles) and possibly even services  (including underlying network technologies and infrastructure) aid espionage. As the article avers,

via Are Chinese Telecoms acting as the ears for the Sri Lankan government? – Groundviews.

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02/17/12

Hacked: How China is stealing Americas business secrets

Sen. John Kerry is fed up with Chinas penchant for looting technology from U.S. businesses — up to $400 billion worth of data each year. When will it stop?POSTED ON FEBRUARY 16, 2012, AT 3:52 PMChinese gamers at an internet cafe: Sen. John Kerry D-Mass. says Chinese hackers are illegally stealing business secrets from American firms. Photo: Imaginechina/Corbis SEE ALL 54 PHOTOSChinese Vice President Xi Jinping, slated to be the next leader of the worlds most populous nation, is getting an earful from U.S. officials over Chinas shady business practices. During Xis first official tour of the U.S. this week, Sen. John Kerry D-Mass. accused a Chinese company of bankrupting a U.S. competitor by ransacking its software. And thats just the tip of the iceberg, alleges Kerry, implicating China in “cyber-attacks, access-to-market issues, espionage [and] theft.” And, indeed, a flurry of recent reports indicate that Chinese hackers, backed by the government, are stealing business secrets from the U.S. Here, a guide:

via Hacked: How China is stealing Americas business secrets – The Week.

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